The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021
- Автор: Рот Вероника, Адамс Джон Джозеф
- Год: 2021
- Язык: английский
- Год: HMH Books : Mariner
- ISBN: 9780358470076
- Жанр: Малые литературные формы прозы
Электронная книга - «The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021». Краткое содержание книги:
This year’s selection of science fiction and fantasy stories, chosen by series editor John Joseph Adams and bestselling author of the Divergent series Veronica Roth, showcases a crop of authors that are willing to experiment and tantalize readers with new takes on classic themes and by exchanging the ordinary for the avant-garde. Folktales and lore come alive, the dead rise, the depths of space are traversed, and magic threads itself through singular moments of love and loss, illuminating the circulatory nature of life, death, the in-between, and the hereafter.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2021 captures the all-too-real cataclysm of human nature, claiming its place in the series with compelling prose, lyrical composition, and curiosity’s never-ending pursuit of discovering the unknown.
The widow survived and that was something. But she drank the water and it haunted her. She carried the weight of the ocean within her for the rest of her days.
The path between the trash mounds went up and up the mountain. It stretched on forever. Until it didn’t.
When I reached the impossible ocean, it took me a few seconds to understand what I was seeing. I didn’t realize how high I’d climbed. None of my family’s stories explained that the mountain towered over the ones around it, so that standing here at the apex, there was only sky.
But I am slow and I am reluctant and that wasn’t what I saw first. On the top of the mountain was a lake, so smooth and clear it looked like it was part of the sky. Or rather, the sky was a part of it.
From where I stood it looked like the water stretched out forever. Like an ocean.
“Daaaamn,” PARKER 17 said. “Still beautiful.”
“You come here often?” I asked, my voice choked with awe.
“It’s. Been a while,” it admitted.
We made our way to the water’s edge, carefully, like we were afraid to make too much noise. The summit was littered with empty packs and collapsed tents and lumps under moldy blankets that looked suspiciously like bodies. But for once, my scavenger instincts didn’t prick with interest. Because crowded against the shoreline were hundreds of jars, glimmering like candles in the evening light. I crept close and saw many of the jars carried names on them. So many names.
The jars were still full of ashes.
This was where I started wondering if my family’s stories were not completely honest. And because I’m painfully slow, this was where I finally, finally realized who the characters in my family’s stories were.
Suddenly, I understood that if I studied all the jars on the shoreline, I’d find one with my dad’s looping, neat handwriting and eight with my mother’s slanted, messy one.
“I’m an idiot,” I said.
“No,” PARKER 17 replied. “Just stubborn.”
From the panniers, I pulled out Nat’s jars, first, saying the names written on the caps as I did. Fredrick. Ravi. Esty. Johanna. Kai. Stu. I had no idea who they were in life, but I wished them peace.
And then my parents.
“The widow. The lost lover,” I whispered as I nestled their ashes among the jars full of other stories.
I’d grown suspicious of my parents’ stories, but I still stood there by the lake, among the dead, and hoped to see their ghosts swimming in the water.
I waited. And waited.
I saw nothing.
That was when the weight of being the only one left alive threatened to swallow me. Suddenly, I understood why there were days my mom couldn’t get out of bed. Why there were days my dad was up and going through the motions, but not really there. Not really functioning.
And I. I finally understood why I was on this path. It was the fear of watching the world die around you and suddenly, desperately wanting a drink from an impossible ocean that would tell you that you weren’t alone, that you would survive. No matter the cost.
I slid off my boots and inched through the jars and jars and jars, and into the impossible ocean that was really just a lake with a clever optical illusion. The water was cold enough to make me gasp, but not cold enough to stop me. I heard PARKER 17’s legs splashing as it followed me.
I stopped when water was at my hips. My hands were shaking as I cupped them together and filled them. I always wanted a happy ending, but that’s not how my family’s stories go.
I brought my hands to my lips.
PARKER 17’s leg tapped against mine.
“I’m sorry. For your loss,” it said. “But. This. Won’t. Make you. Feel better. I’ve. Led so many. Here.”
“I know,” I whispered. I didn’t want to feel better though. I understood now why some travelers never left the top of the mountain.
“Tell me,” PARKER 17 said, after a moment. “About. Your parents.”
“They were killed. Armed robbery,” I said. “I wasn’t there.”
“It wasn’t. Your fault.”
“I know.”
And I did know, but I didn’t really believe it. Just like I knew I probably wouldn’t have seen my parents’ ghosts swimming in the lake. But I hoped. I really hoped. I wanted to see them this one last time so I could apologize.
“They told stories,” I said. “I think most of them were made up. But there was a lot of truth too.”
“Ones with. Happy endings. I hope?”
“Never.” I stared at the water cupped in my hands. It showed me nothing except my own distorted reflection. Me, full of stories. “But I think that was the point.”
It was then I realized why my parents told me so many stories about the impossible ocean.
I opened my fingers and let the water in my hands drain out.
“Really?” PARKER 17 asked, surprised.
I turned and smiled at it. “I think I found the story I want to become.”
I turned and headed toward the shore. A moment later, I heard the bot splashing behind me.
If you must know. If you must have one more story to add to your collection about the impossible ocean, about the cursed path, then here’s mine.
One time, a reluctant traveler took the cursed path to the impossible ocean because they didn’t know there was another road. They had grown up on a steady diet of family stories that always had tragic endings. And now those stories were inside their head, their gut, their bones.
So, they climbed the cursed path, made it to the top of the mountain, held the water in their hands. It was only there that the reluctant traveler realized what they’d been missing.
Their family’s stories were part of them, but that didn’t mean it was a story they had to become.
CELESTE RITA BAKER
Glass Bottle Dancer
When de words “glass bottle dancer” come to me as I was daydreaming, listening to music on de radio, I thought it sounded like someting I’d like to see, didn’t tink it would change me whole life. I imagine it might mean taking a bunch of soda and beer bottles, laying dem on dey sides, and stepping on dem widout having dem roll away. I thought a limbo dancer might do it to add someting special to dere act.
Me limbo ain’t dat low. Nothing in me life particularly high or low, but de idea of glass bottle dancing came to me every time somebody took me parking space, or cut in front of me in line, or call me out me name. Every time me boss say I must call Harbor Market and remind dat greedy cheater dat moving he expired foods from de expensive side of town to he other shop on de poor people side of town ain’t nice, ain’t fair, and is against regulations. When day after day I must den pick up de people dem phone and talk to de store owners while dey laying on dey yachts in de marina and I can’t cuss dem stink but must be polite and act like dis de first warning and we don’t speak every month. Is times like dat dat glass bottle dancing does jump to de forefront of me mind like dat gon’ do anyting to change de world.
Day come when Miss Aggie, who make one hundred and six on she last birthday, die dead. She sit down on de park bench, resting, as she always do when she going from helping de children wid dey homework in de library after school, to stopping by de rum shop to have two shot glasses a gin wid a half wedge a lime and a garlic clove. She does stop dere five days a week making jokes and telling tall tales. She laughter does bust out de door and sashay down de street. But dat day she sit down on de bench in de park and ain’t get up.
Look dere, I say to meself, Ms. Aggie live a good life. She do good tings and she had fun. She wrinkles more laugh dan frown. She a doer, not a watcher. So, Mable, I say, Mistress Mable DelaCourt—I does call meself by me full name when I need to be stern—you may be two hundred and twenty-nine pounds, you may be shape like a ripe avocado what done fell from de tree, bruised and almost bursting, and you may be looking fifty years in de baby of she eye, but you gon’ teach youself glass bottle dancing.